April Diary 27: half steam ahead!

 

the sky clears a little just before sunset which i watch from the eastern ridge for once, among the oaks. there’s a breeze and the forest is full of voices. yesterday when it was so warm the oak buds got close to bursting but tonight’s gonna be cold so i’m glad they didn’t

one of those breezes that makes every twig tingly

clouds moving in on the sun accompanied by a distant low grinding

the more i write the less i see. but the more i see the more i want to write

what is this compulsion to record every thought and observation or it doesn’t count? it’s the guiding superstition of the cult of literacy: that writing things down makes them matter. what it makes of them generally is material, raw material to exploit

what if instead we let them matter on their own merits and in their own incomprehensible tongues. no ideas but in things as the man said

matter, mater, goddess etc

a tree just dropped a branch 100 feet away. the wind is bordering on brisk. given my distance from home and lack of a flashlight i should begin to amble back

you know that was an actual human voice on the wind. might be a PA system at some local sportsball thing

when i said the forest is full of voices i didin’t… hold on…

hermit thrush song just past sunset. i’m 100 feet away. a turkey is gobbling down the ridge. i’m having a ridge experience

except for this towhee. shut the fuck up you idiot. it’s not always about you

just slowly following the thrush

the whippoorwill starts up while the hermit thrush is still singing. there’s a conjunction i’ve never heard before

i guess this phone has a flashlight

when i’m too tired to talk i can actually get some good listening in #manproblems

today i read a number of poems poorly because i am sleep-deprived. what does that say about the quality of insight behind my own writing today – the usual morning porch thing, erasure poem, and a couple of haiku plus this nonsense all produced at half power or less

i feel like the only truly worthwhile things i did today were have a couple of interesting face-to-face conversations and get dad’s car inspected. and go for a walk after supper. glad i pushed myself to do that

i’m not saying it’s not important to be productive just to remember to keep that in perspective. products are in some ways incidental to the making. and it’s through making through doing through participating in larger things with other people or nonhuman others, it’s though all that that we tend to find fulfillment. not through being productive per se. though so many default to that for their measurement of self worth. well who am i to say they’re wrong

we poets need to own our wrongness and revel in it. stay away from the ideologues on all sides and just try to be cleverer fools like Charles Simic or Elaine Equi

i do believe in the ecopoetry project but that’s because i choose to believe that our culture let alone our species and the ecosystem can survive in the long term or even at this point the medium short term. if it can than it makes a great deal of sense to pour our efforts into trying to change the culture because the rule of law likely won’t survive in many places but if local people can be led to value local natural areas and common resources and have the vocabulary and ideas to back it up in what may well be a harsh and brutal time well that’s maybe the best we can hope for honestly

that was the depressing thinky thought i had at the start of my walk which prompted me to give myself a stern talking to and pay more attention to what the trees might have to say

about which i still have no clue of course. i’m not a real nature mystic i just play one on my blog

really what i most want to do right now is listen to the Talking Heads

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